Susan J. Blackmore  - Quotes

 Humans are often credited with having real foresight, in distinction to the rest of biology which does not. For example, Dawkins compares the 'blind watchmaker' of natural selection with the real human one. 'A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection . . . has no purpose in mind'.



I think this distinction is wrong. There is no denying that the human watchmaker is different from the natural one. We humans, by virtue of having memes, can think about cogs, and wheels, and keeping time, in a way that animals cannot. Memes are the mind tools with which we do it. But what memetics shows us is that the processes underlying the two kinds of design are essentially the same. They are both evolutionary processes that give rise to design through selection, and in the process they produce what looks like foresight.
 

Tags: creativity   design   foresight   memetics     


William S. Burroughs  - Quotes

 The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility. 

Tags: foresight   reality     
John Stuart Mill  - Quotes

 Foresight of phenomenon and power over them depend on knowledge of their sequences, and not upon any notion we may have formed respecting their origin or inmost nature. 

Tags: control   foresight   knowledge     


John Fitzgerald Kennedy  - Quotes

 All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days . . .nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. 

Tags: courage   foresight   inspirational     


Quotes of the Day